Lemme bore you by telling you why this tweet was an effing outrage. The jobs numbers are released at 8:30am. The President is traditionally told the numbers the night before, but told to play them close to his chest. But at 7:21am he’s telling us all to tune in. Wonder why.

Dozens of federal employees who go to enormous lengths to make sure that no-one (beyond the White House) can get a jump on the numbers and front-run the market. But the President just big-footed them. And really, who’s surprised that the numbers were stronger than expected?

Here’s the problem: Who wants to buy U.S. stocks, if you think there’s a chance that you might be buying from someone who’s selling based on Trump having said something to them on the phone last night? Even if this effect is small, what’s the upside from Trump’s tweet?

And you can’t put the genie back in the bottle: Next jobs day, if at 7:21am Trump tweets about Roseanne or some other dumb thing that’s not the jobs day, markets will infer he doesn’t want to talk about the jobs report. Watch: Stocks will fall as a result.

If *any* other federal employee had tweeted in a way that gave the *appearance* of hinting at confidential information, they would be fired on the spot. Plus there would be an investigation checking their emails and phone logs to make sure they hadn’t leaked to others, too.

Honestly, I get that on the scale of norms violations, it’s small. And if he’s an honest bloke, he didn’t tip off any of his mates. But what’s the upside? Why not follow the norms of your office? Why mess with financial markets? Or undermine the integrity of our stats?

If during the Clinton or Obama Administrations there had been a statement from @POTUS or anyone senior official in the morning before the Employment Report it would have been a major scandal-with all sorts of investigations following on.

You should have gotten the employment numbers from the Council of Economic Advisers yesterday. And if this tweet is conveying inside information about a particularly good jobs number you should never get them in advance from the Council of Economic Advisers again. https://t.co/Qd3ig89onT